I’ve seen and used two generations of Moto E and they have been good value for money entry level smartphones. And so when I was asked to recommend a smartphone in the price range of 7-8K INR I was able to point a few with the top contenders being Redmi 3S, Lenovo Vibe K5 and Moto E3 power. Even though specs wise the Redmi 3S and Vibe K5, the almost vanilla android flavor of Moto E3 got my vote.
After getting on my hands on the Lenovo made Moto E3, the design language is different from Moto E2 and with a screen size of 5″ (720p resolution) its a ‘ok’ looking smartphone. Measuring 143.8 x 71.6 x 9.6 mm and weighing 153 grams it’s not very signle hand friendly but its solid. The phone is powered by a 64 bit quad core mediatek processor (MT6735p) and 2 GB RAM with 16 GB internal storage and a option to expand memory via microSD card. The screen is nice and bright and the phone running Android 6.0 is quite smooth in day to day operations but with some extra multi tasking tends to slightly lag. But for calling / texting / casual browsing, gaming it should do just fine.
The “Power” monicker comes because of its 3500 mAh battery (removable) with Quick charge function (Quick charge adapter was in the box). With just 2G data enabled the phone ran a amazing 4 days before it ran out of juice. But with 4G data enabled (phone is eligible for Reliance Jio welcome offer) it came around 2 days with slight usage.
Some of the disappointments of this phone was the very useful Moto app (with actions / gestures) is not available and no Android 7.0 update has been announced even though it has been released just recently.